Evolve Officially Announced; Taking Premature Pre-Orders

2K kindly sent us a press release officially announcing Turtle Rock’s Evolve so here it is. The cat is already out of the bag but with such a lack of information available, we’ll take what we get.

Evolve is the next game from the creators of Left 4 Dead, a multiplayer shooter you might have heard of. They’re leaving the 4-player cooperative element in but decided to swap out the undead hordes for a single, player-controlled monster – then let everyone loose on an alien planet called Shear (that sounds reassuring). It’s not the first time we’ve heard of asymmetrical gameplay such as this, though with the amount of talent behind this there’s bound to be a surprise waiting.

“Our philosophy is to build incredibly fun game experiences that we can’t find anywhere else,” said Chris Ashton, co-founder and design director at Turtle Rock Studios. “Evolve’s co-op vs. lone wolf formula has created some of the most intense multiplayer matches we’ve ever experienced.”

Human players get to choose one of four classes: Trapper, Assault, Support and Medic, each with unique abilities and load outs. Markov, one of the assault guys, gets a personal shield with two large weapons and lots of health to stomp around. As players progress, they unlock upgrades, skins and even perks. On the other hand, monsters get “savage abilities” and will have a selection of character types to choose from. As for the planet, “flora and fauna act as an adversary to man and monster alike.” Easy to see where its name comes from.

The official site is live though it only serves as a pre-order portal at the moment. Buying the game now will net you the Savage Goliath skin at launch and a new monster character once available after release. Calling it an expansion pack is one thing but taking pre-orders before we get a release date is something else. Instead, feel free to follow their social channels such as Facebook and Twitter. Their payment model for these monster DLCs ought to be something to look out for too/

A little trivia: THQ picked up Turtle Rock after the latter’s departure from Valve, announcing the studio’s next game as “Wild”. After THQ’s bankruptcy (nearly one year ago now), Take-Two Interactive purchased the rights at the auction.

The next batch of information drops tomorrow so we’ll update this post once that happens. Evolve will be available for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (Ed: Take-Two explained that the Xbox One version will only come out this Fall for Asia – pending a firmed release date from Microsoft).